Would you kindly give me your thoughts? (Off-Topic)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Monday, February 29, 2016, 20:16 (3033 days ago) @ Claude Errera

Then there's the PvP side, where every tiny little advantage can be important. If I'm using a decent Doctrine of Passing against a highly skilled opponent with a perfect Doctrine of Passing, he is going to win every single time. "Decent" just isn't good enough in that case. And since infusing weapons up to Trials levels can be a bit of an investment, I don't want to spend the materials and infusion fodder on anything less than an excellent roll.

lol - I don't even HAVE a Doctrine of Passing, so I don't experience this struggle. ;) (In a more general, less jokey sense, when I lose 1v1s during a game, I almost NEVER think about what perks the other guy might have that I don't. Almost always, it's that he's better than me. I have a few go-to guns as primaries - and they're almost all Exotics, so perks are less important to me, I guess, because the other people using the same gun as me have the same perks as me. I use non-exotics in PvE - but there, there's nothing to compare with.)

I actually wonder if that is one of the reasons why exotic primaries often seem to dominate the crucible (in terms of "which weapons get used the most")... there's no guess work involved. If you're using a Mida multitool and you get killed by a guy who is also using Mida, he outplayed you. Simple. No doubt about "is his roll better than mine" or "I wonder what perks he has". I guess there is still the slight possibility of attack levels making a difference in certain playlists, but I doubt it makes a huge impact. It just seems simpler psychologically.

2) If you absolutely can't live without a particular roll, yes, you'll have to run things a few times to get it... but you might be exaggerating on the actual numbers. I've run Warpriest 2 or 3 dozen times, I'd guess, and I have worse luck than EVERYONE I've played with for Defiance of Yasmin (sniper rifle) drops. I ran it half a dozen times before the first one dropped. And then I ran it ANOTHER half-dozen times before one dropped above 312.

But if I look back now, I've had 6 or 7 drop, at least three of which were over 315. That's one every 3-5 runs... and like I said, I've never played with anyone who has worse luck than I do for that particular gun. Most people get one every other run or so. So 15 runs for a Zauli's Bane might be a slight exaggeration. :)

I agree that Challenge mode has made the raid weapons far easier to come across, and I think that's great. But I don't think I'm exaggerating that much ;) I must have run the warpriest challenge 9 times (3 characters per try) before I got the sniper rifle I wanted. Considering that Challenge mode essentially yields double drops, that's A LOT of drops before getting the one I wanted. But that's fine. Not really a big deal at all. But when you apply those drop rates to activities that don't have a challenge mode, it becomes more frustrating. Aside from a single class item, a ghost, and a single pair of gloves, I've never had a item drop above 314 from Trials or Iron Banner, and I put a lot of time into both activities. 6 months into TTK, that feels a bit crummy to me. It's still not a big deal at all, but I can't help but ask "why?". Why keep the drop rates so low? Yes, it's silly... but it would be nice to get a drop every now and then that makes me say "wow, look what I got!" without having to add "too bad it doesn't have good perks" or "too bad it's only 302". It's kind of insane to me that you don't get a guaranteed 320 drop for going to the lighthouse or from a rank 5 Iron Banner package.

Hmm... I wonder if you and I are playing the same game. I've gotten exactly TWO types of Defiance of Yasmin/Harrowed DoY guns: one with Perfectionist, the other with Life Support. (Just looked - I currently have 4 left, and 3 have Perfectionist, one has Life Support.) They all have Cocoon as the second perk, they all have the same sights, the same barrel mods. I'm not seeing multiple rolls on this gun.

Likewise, most of my Quillim's Terminuses have Persistence or Eye of the Storm (I think I have one with Life Leech, but it's really not that different). They all have the same everything else.

I am NOT seeing huge numbers of variants for any of the raid weapons. :(

In particular, I wanted a sniper with Firefly. I think I've become a bit of a Firely addict... the perk, AND the TV show :)

Agree with you 100% there. I think the key difference to me is that in year 1, when you finally did get that weapon you were hoping for, there were none of the caveats that exist now. You never said "I FINALLY GOT A FATEBRINGER... oh, the perks aren't great". The drop rates were certainly too low then, but you knew what you were getting when it finally dropped. This time around we have higher drop rates, but I'd argue that the chances of getting the "ideal" drops are even lower. I'm not convinced that it's an improvement. Is there really an argument against making every single normal Oryx drop a 310 and every single heroic drop a 320? Would that not be an instant improvement when it comes to the enjoyment players get out of the activities? Considering we still might not get a roll that we want, at least it would be awesome infusion fodder. Yes, there is challenge mode, but I see that as a solution to a problem that should never have existed.

Yeah, I'd definitely like your solution - but clearly Bungie doesn't agree with us. :)

I've heard 2 episodes of the Planet Destiny podcast that featured Bungie employees over the past few months; they did an episode with Luke Smith back in October and an episode with Leif Johansen (one of the PvP designers) during Crimson Doubles. In both episodes, the cohosts of the podcast relayed their rather disappointing loot-drop experiences to their guests from bungie, and in both cases the bungie employees sounded legitimately surprised. The PD guys were quite specific: "36 games of Crimson Doubles, no ghosts" or "7 King's Fall completions, 2 primary weapons, no helmets". That kind of thing. This is obviously 100% conjecture on my part, but after hearing both reactions I wouldn't actually be surprised if there was a bug somewhere in Bungie's loot-drop algorithms that is causing things to behave strangely. Leif in particular was very clear that the experience the PD guys were having was "not the intended design".